5 Ways to Turn Happiness Into An Advantage

My guess is that you have already answered that question several times today. You answer it every time your brain says, "I'll be happy when I find a job." "I'll be happy when I get a promotion." "I'll be happy when my dissertation is finished."

The formula is clear: work harder, then you'll be successful, then you'll be happier.

When I asked some of my Harvard students, their answer was easy: "I'm working my butt off now so I can be happy when...[fill in the blank with a six figure banking job, make a scientific breakthrough, get into medical school, etc.]."

But here's what these brilliant students often forget: getting into Harvard was supposed to make them happy. How many of them in high school thought they'd be happy once they got in? Why didn't the success then happiness formula work?

It's hard to find happiness after success if the goalposts of success keep changing.

Watch my TEDx talk on The Happiness Advantage at Harvard

Our society's formula for success and happiness is broken.

Now for the good news. Based on the findings in The Happiness Advantage: if you reverse the order of the formula, you end up with greater happiness and greater success rates. Happiness is and advantage, and the precursor to greater success. Every single relationship, business and educational outcome improves when the brain is positive first. If you cultivate happiness while in the midst of your struggles, work, at school, while unemployed or single, you increase your chances of attaining all the goals you are pursuing...including happiness.

So how can we pursue happiness right now? When I was counseling overwrought Harvard students, one of the first things I would tell them is to stop equating a future success with happiness. Empirically, we know success does not lead to happiness. Is everyone with a job happy? Is every rich person happy? Then step one is to stop thinking that finding a job, getting a promotion, etc. is the only thing that can brings happiness. Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.

Second, realize that happiness is a work ethic. Happiness is not a mystery. You have to train your brain to be positive just like you work out your body. We not only need to work happy, we need to work at being happy. Try an experiment right now called the 21 Day Challenge. Pick one of the five researched habits and try it out for 21 days in a row to create a positive habit, then comment on this blog or Facebook me and tell us your results.

1. Write down three new things you are grateful for each day into a blank word document or into the free app I Journal. Research shows this will significantly improve your optimism even 6 months later, and raises your success rates significantly.

2. Write for 2 minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours. This is a strategy to help transform you from a task-based thinker, to a meaning based thinker who scans the world for meaning instead of endless to-dos. This dramatically increases work happiness.

3. Exercise for 10 minutes a day. This trains your brain to believe your behavior matters, which causes a cascade of success throughout the rest of the day.

4. Meditate for 2 minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out. This will help you undo the negative effects of multitasking. Research shows you get multiple tasks done faster if you do them one at a time. It also decreases stress and raises happiness.

5. Write one, quick email first thing in the morning thanking or praising a member on your team. This significantly increases your feeling of social support, which in my study at Harvard was the largest predictor of happiness for the students.

If you are having trouble getting started, at the end of my TED talk I describe how to make those habits even easier to start by managing activation energy.

If you reverse the formula, you can turn happiness into a success advantage, raising every business and educational outcome. Start by doing one of these habits. And once and for all, stop yourself and others from saying, "I'll be happy when..." That formula is broken. But there is a better one: happiness leads to greater success.

**I would love some help researching this. How have you seen yourself or others put happiness off until they were successful? How can we help people reverse this trend?

My 2 cents would be about what we're exposed to in our daily lives. "I'll be happy when ... " is not something you're born with it's something you learn from others and they learn it just as you will continue to learn it from something you see every day. What is that you ask? It's advertisment. We all see them be it on TV, online, or driving down the road. It's hard to stay away from them unless you lock yourself in the basement and turn the ligt off - a lot of good that will do you. But all advertisments are built on "You'll be happy when you buy our product/order our service ... ". It's a shame that some very bright psychologists were pulled into the ever growing gigantic business that is advertisment. So my suggestion to help you reverse the fromula would be to take the fight elsewhere. I was privileged to take a "Media education" class in elementary school. It taught me a lot. The very simplest of things make a pretty tempting big picture. The commercials create the need in you, they abuse your "want to be happy" system and then give you a false solution for it - only to dispair once the promised happiness is nowhere to be found (sounds familiar?).
So in my opinion it would be crucial that you educate people on the psychology behind the ad business aswell, after all, who knows it might have been the commercials that taught us this reversed happiness formula in the first place.

Great points! "I'll be happy when...I drink this product, or buy this house, or wear this deodorant." Scientists know you can buy happiness, but not that way. Research shows that pro-social spending, giving to charities or to provide for a friend or to create a social engagement, has much longer lasting effects upon happiness. The advertisers are not to be blamed. They merely highlight a need in our lives that we want filled. And advertisers cannot stop, that's their job. I think the real work needs to be done at the individual level. By developing positive habits and a happiness advantage mindeset, we can create happiness instead of trying to find it. Thank you for your great and thoughtful comment!

Once you think about it. If we're reversing the success-happy formula we could also reverse advertisments. If there would be a positive change ad on TV every once in a while, it could have a great effect - particularly due to the stigma on mental health (people would see it's nothing unusual and get some good advice on the matter).

Thanks for this happy post. I am going to give some of the exercises you suggest a try. I'm already doing some of them (exercise and meditation) and have certainly noticed an improvement in my overall happiness. Maybe it's placebic but the result is still highly positive.

I'm also doing a couple other things I've read that improve happiness. I'm purposefully grinning in the morning--often before getting out of bed-- and throughout the day (but not in front of others since this may look a bit strange).

Also, I consciously dismiss negative thoughts as much as I can and try to write about that things I feel good about in my journal each day. Also, my wife and I, as a supper-time ritual, ask our three kids and each other "what was good about today" and we all have a jolly time hearing how the 4-yr old loved some bowl of noodles.

But....I also write some negative stuff in my journal. I'm not sure this has been a good thing but in a way, it compartmentalizes my "troubles" and actually belittles them (I'm a very fortunate person who does not have real problems that many in the world must face). And it's sort of cathartic to vent these negative thoughts (usually relationship things with loved ones or co-workers). The danger is that it's written now and I can go back and stir up negative things. And I've done this but for me there's usually a sense of "why was I so upset" when I go back and read that stuff. So now when I have what I feel are negative thoughts (just downer attitude) I recall that old negative stuff is not so negative after some time and that this current unhappiness is probably ephemeral too.

As long as you're not taking pills you can be reasurred that the result is not a placebo.

Writing down some trouble does indeed help you get a better perspective on things it helps you to detach from the problem. You go from "I feel" to "The person who wrote this felt". It's you in both cases but to evaluate an event properly you need to be bias free - writing the problem down can help. If the problem still evokes some negative emotion after you go and read it later on it could be that it is still unresolved - you still didn't get to the core of it and said to yourself fair's fair. Like you say in the end it passes by eventually, someday you can even laugh at how foolish a reaction might have been.

But I did notice you seem to value yourself a bit less because of "(I'm a very fortunate person who does not have real problems that many in the world must face)" - or maybe it's just a general sense you have about things. Either way just wanted to point that out so you can be more aware of what's going on.

I write negative things down deliberately. They are more likely to resolve themselves somewhat when I write them. If I keep them in my head they go in circles. I don't reread them -- writing them was the job at hand. Every few weeks I shred them. The process makes me feel more able to manage negative emotions, rather than feel trapped by them.

Great comment thread. Researchers like Pennebaker have found a cathartic effect caused by journaling about negative experiences, however there is a large caveat: if you are depressed, then journaling about negative experiences can cause rumination and makes depression more protracted. I think it is like everything in life: it is how your brain processes it. If you journal about experiences to have power over them, then you will find that benefit. If you journal because you feel that your life is so negative you need a safety valve, then your body and brain will scan the world for constant threats or chances for negativity. Thanks for your comments!

Good stuff. It's so true that we must avoid the trap of equating future material success with happiness, but it's so anti-intuitive. The field of positive psychology produces many well-known pointers, but some of them are hugely counter-intuitive.

On the gratitude point: it's a great idea to count your blessings. But someone on psychology today made a great point: we should also try to imagine what our lives would be like if our blessings were taken away from us. God, I can't stress enough how TRUE it is that we don't appreciate what we have until it's taken away. Some of us learn these things brutally. There is a better way.

That is quite a comprehensive list on your blog, thank you for sharing. Some people say that imagining a world without all our blessings can increase stress. I would like to be grateful for what I have in the present, while imagining a world where I am STILL grateful even if all these things are taken away.

Why can't people just BE happy? Why the need for a science on happiness, books, courses, seminars, etc.? All happiness is is a change in perception. Accept what you can't change, change what you can and realise that you can only control two things in this world; your thoughts and your actions

Interesting, my response would be: why can't everyone just BE smart? That's because intelligence, like happiness, has a genetic component. Some people are born smarter or happier than others. But that is not the end of the story. If we make happiness not something that just happens, but something that we work for, and cultivate, then we can raise our happiness longterm. We exercise our bodies to become more fit, we can exercise our brains to become happier. That way, when we are challenged by the external world, we have not fleeting happiness, but well practiced happiness. When asked what the fastest way to enlightenment is, the Dalai Lama merely responded, "I inch my way forward every day." Even for him, happiness and joy require discipline, determination and effort.

Hi Shawn, I would be happy if I could have my Dad back. Now, this is lugubrious. I want something that no amount of materialistic value can replace. I lost him last year. It was hard to feel grateful of what you have, nor feeling whole when the one you really want is not there. I wish what I wanted would be something more realistic.

I am fighting daily to reverse the mindset. A great trusting friend has helped. He's given me some ropes. I've started taking them recently, having rejected many attempts before.

I came across your profile on Speakers platform. I do three of your list. Number 5 is hard because not everyone has the skill of friendly praise writing. Some people can be either praising too much to the point of being silly and odd resulting in negative effect from the receiver or praising awkwardly when never done it before.

Hereafter, I am following you ;). Will purchase your book asap! I'm aiming for the growth you talked about.

My personal success will be when I can accept that I can't bring my Dad back to live, whatever I do. Happiness fuels success as you said. I'm still looking for this in the core of my soul.

For step 5 it can be as simple as stating "thinking of you today. I am grateful we are friends"
poetry not required. Just keep it simple for yourself. Like any of the exercises the habit of thinking in that manner is the power. Who do you have in your life that you are grateful for - let them know!"

Easy for you to say. You are on the faculty at Harvard, work with Fortune 500 companies, and have an established consulting firm. I just lost my faculty job, am divorced, and separated from my children. Why is it that whenever you see someone advocating happiness as a path to success, they are already successful. It would be refreshing to see someone who is an established abject failure arguing being grateful, blah blah blah as a path to success.

Also, people that are wealthy that still aren't happy: sure, they face the same problems other do like heart break, family/friends dying, etc. but I like to think I could lead a "happier" life with a fortune than I can working a full time job, comparatively speaking. I can still be happy in both scenarios, I just think having massive wealth has the potential to make things easier on an individual.

I dont think Shawn is advocating happiness or gratefulness as a path to success. What he's saying is that positive attitude gives you an advantage over those who don't have it. If you feel better, you perform better at everything you do. And if you perform a little bit better at everything, over a lifetime it may make a really big difference in the amount of success you'll experience. It's just very difficult to be effective at anything if you're down on yourself. In that respect it works very much like physical health and fitness. Having it doesn't make you a success, but it does make achieving anything much easier than it would be have you not had it.

What Shawn is also saying is that happiness is more of a skill, a habit of the mind than it is any effect of external stimulus. And as such, you can choose to cultivate it so that in few weeks or months or years you can be happy no matter what or you can choose not to in which case it will be difficult for you to be happy ever – you will be going through life thinking that achieving the next thing will make you happy, and then the next, and then the next, and then you'll find yourself dying regretting that you didn't just let yourself to be happy all the time and feel like wasted your life pursuing all this, at the end worthless, stuff.

So it's not a path to success. But it makes succcess easier, and when it comes – bigger. And it's just a better way to approach life I believe ;) Because if you can't be happy now, it's likely you won't be able to be happy anytime in the future no matter what you will have or what you wont have. There will always be a better place to be, a better lifestyle to have, a better thing to be doing. If you're comparing what you have with the better thing today, you'll be doing the same once you have the better thing. Because there will still be some even better things. And that's how many billionaires end up owning jets and yachts and still being miserable workaholics who aren't able to simply enjoy what they have but always need even more. It's a habit.

I mean – at one point in time you had a family and a job, right? So, I guess, you were getting up at 7 am with a smile so big you could eat a banana sideways, thanking God for another beautiful day he gave you, then with no smaller smile you were literally flying to your job and performing it with a feeling of excitement and gratefulness for being privileged to perform it and bla bla bla, you know what I'm getting at don't you ;) Happiness is first a choice and then a habit. And while the circumstances may make it easier or more difficult to be happy, at the end of the day it's still your choice.

Ok, now for the path to success.

Path to success, as I see it, is monumental amount of a good, organized effort :) What I mean by that is that you have to decide definitely what you want from life so that instead of wandering and thinking how did it happened and searching for excuses your whole mind (especially the unconscious part of it) is busy working on hitting the specific target you gave it. Then you can organize all of your resources – time, money, knowledge, access to knowledge you have thanks to the internet and libraries and bookshops, skills, relationships etc. to first figure out how to get where you want to get and then to get there.

It's important to remember that during the "figure out" part your idea of what is possible for you and what you really want will be propably changing so don't try to get it perfect, just get it going. Also don't try to come up with a perfect plan for how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Even after exhausting preparation and contemplation your idea of how thinggs work will still slihgtly differ from how they actually work. That's why you have to try your ideas, get real-life feedback as frequently as you can, record the effects, analyze what worked and what did not, do more of what worked and less of what didn't, try new ideas. That's how you progress in life. And you do that all the way down the road till you hit your target. Planning and moving aren't separate steps – you do both all the time, analyze results and adjust.

The idea here is simply to get moving in the right direction and keep moving in the right direction all the time - step by step, checking the course and correcting it as you're progressing. And when you're moving in the right direction for long enough you eventually get where you wanted. Nothing airy-fairy here.

And at the end remember - the beauty of life is in the struggle. It really is. I mean, imagine life without it - world when no one competes for anything, where there is nothing to work on, nothing to improve, nothing to fight for, no problems to solve – you know, everything is just perfect. What would you live for? You'd get up in the morning and what? Walk around the block with family? You might think it would be nice but you'd really go nuts after 5 minutes. People NEED problems. Otherwise you couldn't have purpose in life. And men can't live without purpose. And to have a purpose you first need something to be screwed up so that you can work on it. Once you solve a problem (achieve a goal), you will realize that you need to find another one to work on. So enjoy the struggle, and be grateful for the screwed up world and life – life wouldn't make sense if it all were just fine. Plus, recognize problems for what they really are – oportunities to grow, so that you can solve them and then aim higher :D And no - being grateful for your problems and looking at them as opportunities to grow isn't a path to success. It's just, I believe, a better way to approach problems :D Because problems are gonna be there – like it or not. And thank God they're gonna be there.

And in case you were wondering - I think I actually am something you could call an established abject failure ;) But I'm happy.

I don't know if that was what you needed or wanted to hear.
I just hope this was helpful.
Wish you luck,
Marek

I'm sorry to hear about your current frustrations (it sounds like a very difficult period of life), and I respect your comment. Let me respond to a few points: 1. The only authors and speakers you hear talking about happiness will by definition be at a certain level of success. But that does not mean only people who are successful (by worldly standards) are the ones talking about happiness. Listen for refugees after natural disasters, individuals in breast cancer support groups, parents of children with physical challenges, or doctors in children oncology wards. Some of them are making the exact same claims that happiness provides advantages to your health and future.

2) You said it is easy to be happy because things are going well. This is false. If it were true, then every rich person you know would be happy. And every poor person you know would be unhappy. Is every married person happy? Is every divorcee unhappy? Is every celebrity you know happy? Every professional athlete? Let me turn the question around: do you know happy divorcees? Do you know happy people who are unemployed? If so then why is happiness harder for some rather than others? Only 10% of happiness is based upon the external world. The majority of happiness is about how your brain processes the world. Plato says, "Be kind because everyone is fighting a tough battle." This is true even for "successful" authors. I'm not defined by my successes as Marek excellently responded.

3) Finally, and most importantly, notice how you defined your life. You defined it based on three challenging components. I only know three negative things about you, and none of the good. I could do the same with my life. I could define myself by all the negative things going on. But you merely highlighted the positive aspects of my life. That is unfair, though understandable as someone would only write the positive parts in their bio. I would encourage you to read about post traumatic growth (see my article on HBR on the subject http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/growth_after_disaster_going_be.html). Is growth possible after losing a job or after a divorce? Look around for examples. If it is possible, then pursue that possibility instead of letting the external world define happiness.

Thank you for your comment and best wishes on using this research to find a way to create post-traumatic growth. Happiness is a choice based upon how your brain decides to process the world in which you find yourself. But above all, let's be compassionate. Happiness (for the longterm) is not easy, but it is possible.

Hey Jeff, or whomever... I love this idea. I have a lot of really strong personal attributes... but happiness hasn't always been a strong one. Blah blah blah on all the reasons why. I could list them all out for you but it's really just water under the bridge. Short end: life has been hard. For 35 yrs. BUT. I'm down for this challenge! I am home schooling my 4 kids this year and we need a change of pace, new vision for our family, and everyone needs to get over the "woe is me" victim-mentality crap. SO. I'm going to start this next Monday with my 4 kids. We are going to implement all 5 challenges into our daily schedule for 21 days ...and longer. I'm going to keep all their journals and notes, etc and I'll be blogging every day about it. Should be an interesting transformation! I'm excited.

Oh, and my husband is from Waco. He's tickled that you're a "local." hahahaha

It's too bad that Buddhist mindfulness is not more prevalent in our society. It teaches that our perspectives, beliefs, perceptions distort the true nature of reality. We see things from our own perspective (the way we want to see them), not how they truly are. We let these blinders dictate how we see the world, instead of seeing it as infinitely changing form in the present. Everything is changing always, nothing is ever the exact same. So why do we cling onto things that are not permanent? This author advocated meditation daily, well through meditation you come naturally to the conclusions I touched base upon earlier. I know this is not 100% relevant, but the fact that he mentioned meditation opened up Pandora's box.

I think your post IS 100% relevant! You're right, Buddhism does teach that illusions about how we construct the world decrease our happiness. And I wish Buddhism thinking was more prevalent, as I wish Christian thinking was as well. I studied both at the Divinity School before getting into positive psychology. Christianity teaches that "we must no longer conform to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds." (Romans 12:1) Positive psychology merely validates what religions have been teaching for thousands of years. Thank you for bringing this up!

Thank you for your helpful presentation, it really struck a chord with me and I'm enjoying being grateful on a daily basis (I even wrote a '3' on my laptop next to the power button to remind me to take time each morning for the exercise). I've found it helps if I try for a grateful thought about each of Elivis' happiness vectors:
Something to do
Something to love
Something to look forward to

To peter,
I don't know what elivis' is (I thought maybe you meant Elvis?) ;) but whatever it is, I love the 3 beside the power button on your laptop! Such a great idea, and the 3happiness vectors are now going to guide me through stating the 3things I am grateful for each day!
Thank you for sharing!

(1) Much of this post is presented from the perspective of psychology, which makes it seem more "woo-woo" than it should be. Recent breakthroughs in empirical neuroscience (See David Rock's book Your Brain at Work or Jeff Schwartz's book, You are Not Your Brain), give the idea of being positive a solid scientific foundation. These studies have shown that using "self-directed neuroplasticity" or "mindfulness" to be positive changes the chemical mix in the brain as well as causes a rewiring of neurons into positive paths. The exercises in the post would lead to these sustaining the positive physical changes but they have to be repeated consistently for a period of time.

(2) This is really about helping individuals. We use the same idea for acheiving extraordinary performance in the work place. When people envision themselves as making an extraordinary social contribution in the work place (similar to Dan Pink's "purpose")there is a huge increase in professional success AND happiness. But the focus on acheiving a greater social good comes first, as suggested in the post.

I am, I believe, predisposed to being a "glass half empty" person. Despite this I have had a relatively happy life thus far. I am the mom of a 16 year old who is definitely even more negative than I; she is fine but definitely in need of some optimism--she recognizes this in herself. I am hoping that she can learn to become more happy and optimistic at this age, with the result being more success and contentment as she enters adulthood. We have decided together to do the 21 day challenge as 2012 begins. We made our first journal entries today, listing the threee things for which we are grateful. I will let you know of our progress.

...is a choice you make. I truly believe this. Sometimes its a harder choice to make than other times, but its always a choice. Abraham Lincoln said, "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." So lets all just make up our minds to be happy!!

...is a choice you make. I truly believe this. Sometimes its a harder choice to make than other times, but its always a choice. Abraham Lincoln said, "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." So lets all just make up our minds to be happy!!

I'm the marketing assistant for Robert Scheinfeld, a NY Times bestselling author who just wrote a new book on how to be happy. It's called "The Ultimate Key To Happiness." It offers a v-e-r-y different approach to defining what happiness really is, and a very different step-by-step path to experience it all the time, no matter what's going on around you. The Internet has gotten so complex. So many options. Can anyone here share ideas for how to get the word out there about this important new book? I'd love to hear your ideas. I'm sure there are tons of ideas I've never thought of before.

Well one would be similar to what you're doing here - market on avenues (forums) suitable for the topic (happiness), however, you must note that this article is very old and as such your comment will be read by at most 10-20 people over the next year or so (unless some extraordinary conditions are involved). So my suggestion would be bring up your google and find people who want the answer you're giving - google the question the book answers. Sure it may seem tedious at some points to answer only one person at a time but eventually the word will spread and reach a wider audience, even in your search you should come across a more visited site (eg. a more recent article or a forum of some sort). That would be about the best way to go about it.

It's not exactly a forum. Each article on PT has a comment section which tends to drop in activity as the article gets older. I do tend to check up on things since I get an email about it, but as you can see, I haven't done that in a while.

Great article. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" is part of our American-ness, yet happiness is a discipline in it's own right - true happiness, not just the instant gratification we find bundled into consumerism.

From the age of 3 my first bad memory was having a cigarette burning in my ear. Mom said it was an accident. As the years went on it got worse. Bigger worse things, too much pain for any child to have to deal with. But the mental and emotional pain is the toughest to use in a positive happy way. Been to many councillors, wrote things down talked to friends and cousins. It made it worse as now Mom is telling people I'm giving her elder abuse. Even though I have not talked to her in 8 years now.
Guess what I'm getting at is I'm on meds for all this as it just rips my brain if I'm not.
What can I do to start getting my brain to look or change the way I see things. How do I stop thinking when someone I love dearly, ( never been married and I'm 55 this year March) isn't the enemy but I take it the wrong way or assume another women is against me breaking me down.
I have to change I'm in love with this amazing women, but I'm struggling as I have only my Mom for experience? I raised two boys on my own. Grown now obviously and have a 3 year old grandchildren she just amazing.
So their are a few women in my life I love now.
I've written things down. I have cried for days at a time. Just one thing ata a time. But we're and how to start. P.s. my mind can't be off meds I get deeply into depression and severe anxiety.
Any ideas?

It is interesting that you say happiness leads to success. My personal experience was relatively the opposite. I was driven to succeed by nothing but fear. I now realise they were irrational fears, however at the time they drove me to achieve things non of my competitors ever did. I finished a degree in a field I don't enjoy because I was afraid to "lose two years". I subsequently worked in a field that I didn't mind to start with but hated by the end of the second year. I spent another 4 years in the field focusing on succeeding because I was too afraid not to succeed and/or to lose the income during my career change. I don't attribute the work itself to unhappiness as much as the impact to my personal life of the career decision, I worked >12 hours a day, in locations so remote they don't have names and I sacrificed all sports, friendships, even health to extents to maintain my career. The benefit was money I never got to enjoy and quite frankly didn't nor never will need. I constantly attribute my willingness to make these sacrifices to my fears. Irrational and ridiculous fears. I was afraid of letting others down and other similar issues, but the main fear I remember was my fear of affording the cost of changing career. It was ridiculous, to put it in perspective. I earnt enough in my first year of work to pay for 3 years at University and all expenses. The following 5 years were sadly 5 years of happiness I've lost out on.

The success that I achieved over the period was by profit performance easily in the top 1% of industry, every project I worked on was the companies example for everyone else and when I started managing all the projects for a company, I was the only guy growing revenue and profit while everyone else saw their growth decline.

Eventually, I quit because I realized success wasn't giving me what I wanted in life. I wasn't smiling. I was always bitter. Reading through your list, I'd say I do at least 4 of this 5 every Day since quitting. I think the key to changing my life was focusing on the small things that make me happy then working out what the best plan is to make me achieve all these small things every day. It might end in big changes like quitting but it'll probably start with small changes like agreeing with friends that every Thursday night will be steak night with the mates. To me the key was focusing on how to make small moments of happiness more frequent.

Beyond happiness leading to success, have you done much research into if high levels of fear and anxiety can create over achievement too?

I have listened to your TED talk, read The Happiness Advantage, and have seen a dramatic change in my happiness and success. My stress and anxiety levels have decreased significantly. I took the 21 day challenge (which has now turned into 4-5 month challenge). I have seen such a positive change. While I still encounter the challenges and pressures of work quotas, grad-school work load and maintaining an overall healthy life balance, I am able to over come fear and stress more quickly. This has lead to greater production and "success" in my career and scholastic endeavors. I have discovered an alternative view of my own personal success. I am able to see that monetary gain is not the only valuable form of success. Ironically, altering this view of my personal success has helped open opportunities and increased my monetary successes. Aside from material gain, I have increased my social network, opened business relationships for future opportunities, increased my physical health and most imortantly, I look forward to finding more growth opportunities everyday. I also attribute these positive changes in my mindset to multiple sources i.e. other books, mentors and personal experiences; however, I do believe all of these improvements were initially sparked by the 21 day challenge. I want to continue this positive growth and look forward to implementing your recommendation of meditation and emailing team members. I recommend The Happiness Advantage to all of my friends and family. Thank you for putting so much work and effort into helping others. Your studies have made a positive impact in my life.